Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

# 581

As of this week, The Nightly has decided it no longer wants to run a weekly art column, believing in these cash-strapped days it’s better to concentrate on business and politics. I’m not exactly surprised. I’m grateful to them for providing me with a lifeline when I needed it, and I understand the corporate logic at play.

This is, however, a further indication of how marginalised arts and culture have become. When numbers are being crunched it’s the arts coverage that is judged most expendable. If this is a social trend it’s a pernicious one, and it has been abetted by our willingness to accept the steady degradation of a sphere that has lost sight of what made art exciting in the first place.

On this site I’m trying to act as a genuinely independent, critical voice, not apologising for my views, but not being unduly partisan either. While I believe the previous government was one of the greatest political disasters ever inflicted on this country, there are many ways in which Labor has been a disappointment. The Greens, meanwhile, have wandered off on some garden path of their own making. No wonder so many people are turning towards independent candidates. Politics will always exert an influence on the arts, but art should not be so eager to subsume itself to politics. If anything, one would hope that art deals primarily with the spirit, acting as a stimulus to the imagination, from which everything else follows.

And so, although I began with the rather idealistic presumption that I could keep everything on this site free of access for everybody, that’s no longer feasible. The Nightly’s support gave me the bare income I needed to do this, but when the media is no longer willing to pay for art or film columns, it leaves me with little choice but to put a minimal fee on my postings as of next week. My intention is to keep this newsletter – which I’ve now rechristened “Editorial” – free of access, but ask readers to pay at least $8 a month or $80 a year, for the art and film reviews. I won’t insult your intelligence by invoking how many cups of coffee that is, or indulging in Guardian-style pleading. I’m really thankful for those of you who’ve already contributed a dollar, and understand if anyone – for philosophical or pecuniary reasons – doesn’t want to continue.

The basic rationale for doing this is economic necessity. It’s the price of independence when most of the commentary we read in the press today is sheer fairy floss, devoid of knowledge, analysis, courage and engagement. I’ll be trying to provide those things, and also to open a forum for discussion. In the past I’ve always been wary of “comments” sections, because so many respondents are no more than trolls, posting junk that needs to be constantly monitored. From now on I’m inviting comments from subscribers and will reply whenever I can.

More importantly, I’m aiming to make this site a lot bigger and better. As you may notice, we’ve changed the domain name to Everythingthe.com – which allows a scope beyond the artworld. It also opens up more of an international perspective, as Australia can be a pretty small place, albeit never short of scandal. If you hang in, it should be a lively ride!

For many artworld insiders it’s axiomatic that the most important feature of a contemporary work is that it takes an opposing stance to what is considered to be an oppressive, conservative status quo – that entity referred to in the 1960s as “the Establishment”. Yet these same people seem to be blind to the fact that most of these radical, anti-establishment gestures are being exhibited by major public art institutions or leading commercial events. That is, by the social, political and commercial entities the artwork is implicitly criticising.

And so we have the spectacle of museum professionals lining up to promote work that mocks the very forum that gives it a platform. But almost everything shown within the confines of art museums or art fairs is neutralised by the antiseptic atmosphere of these places. What might be offensive on the street or in a shop window, is business-as-usual in an art gallery, where it’s taken for granted that artists do a lot of crazy, angry things. It’s like going to see wild animals in a zoo – it’s titillating, but they can’t harm you.

Things have been like this for a long time, with the current institutional obsessions with race and gender being merely the latest manifestations of this tendency. In the 1970s, movements such as Conceptual Art and Feminist Art were the cutting edge. In the 1980s, everything became bound up with postmodern appropriation, supported by reams of half-understood theory. Since then, it’s been open slather, with all forms of art on display simultaneously and a few strong personalities such as Mike Parr, or latterly, Ben Quilty, acting as occasional traffic cops.

The problem nowadays, is that our ever-increasing reliance on the Internet is providing an alternative to the paradox of an avant-garde supported and funded by the establishment. Everyone is capable of going on-line and seeing a vast quantity of art they find more attractive, more stimulating and thought-provoking than the things they see in so many public institutions, which tend to fall back on the same accredited ‘cutting edge’ artists or categories of artist. Here, I’d make an exception for an exhibition such as the NGV Triennial, which has consistently tried to find new and surprising art – and has been widely sneered at by those who prefer to fall back on the same old stuff.

In the contemporary art world, success may almost be gauged by the quantity and character of one’s enemies. While the NGV is far from perfect, it has made a much bigger effort to diversify and look elsewhere than any of its peers.

If it were simply a matter of noting that people are finding alternatives, this should be concerning enough to the art institutions. Far worse is the fact that with most galleries, audience numbers are declining, costs are skyrocketing, governments are less and less willing to foot the bill, and private sponsorship is difficult to obtain. In such an environment one would imagine the art institutions would be strategising furiously about how to attract visitors and increase revenue from government and private sources.

What we have instead is a growth in soulless corporatism alongside a complacent mindset that assumes audiences will come along to see whatever the gallery chooses to exhibit. If those exhibits are skewed to fit the current ideological preoccupations, the public are morally obliged to conform. The result is a long sequence of shows and events that make the museum people feel virtuous, but do not appeal to a general audience or even an established, art-friendly audience. Museums could get away with it in earlier decades when people didn’t spend their lives on-line seeking out things they actually like. It’s also fair to say there were more shows and a greater mix of subjects. Today there are fewer exhibitions than ever, largely as a consequence of rising costs and declining revenues, but also because of a lack of imagination in programming.

There may be even worse reasons: a paradoxical conservatism that accepts certain categories of art and artist as “worthy”, while rejecting many other possibilities for having “no commercial potential”. In other words, ‘We’ll show the politically correct things people should (but don’t) want to see, but not things they might want to see.’

One of the most startling statistics I’ve heard recently is that Peter Godwin’s survey show at the S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney, has broken that institution’s attendance record. I wrote an appreciative review, and also contributed to the catalogue, but there was no review in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Murdoch papers or the Guardian. By contrast, a commercial gallery ‘survey’ by Ben Quilty in Brisbane received blanket coverage.

For Godwin to break a record despite being roundly ignored by the mainstream media suggests there is a large audience out there, hungry for an exhibition by a talented painter who concentrates on conventional themes such as still life, landscapes and interiors. It’s a potential audience that is being poorly served by most of the leading art institutions.

Last week, Christopher Heathcote, one of Australia’s few genuinely knowledgeable and open-minded art writers, sent me some impressions from the Melbourne Art Fair. I was invited, but didn’t feel motivated enough to self-fund a trip to Melbourne. In an ideal world I’d pay for travel myself, but practically speaking I usually have to fall back on an assisted trip, with the proviso that whatever I write, be it positive or negative, remains inviolable. If I strongly suspect something is going to be bad, I’ll avoid it.

I had no preconceptions about the Melbourne Art Fair, but judging by Christopher’s report it seems the event was infected with the same depressing ‘spirit of our times’ one finds with most art contemporary art institutions. He writes:

A decorated hearse emblazoned with the words ‘F—k Australia’ and ‘White Trash’ above an Australian flag superimposed with a skull is a prominent feature at this weekend’s Melbourne Art Fair.

One might think the recent controversy involving Sam Kerr would set people avoiding such language. But Art Fair management specially borrowed this work by Paul Yore, titled ‘F—k Me Dead’, to exhibit near the entrance.

Meanwhile, a huge ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ sign at the entrance proclaims the Art Fair extends ‘our respect to ancestors and Elders past and present, and to all First Peoples’. But no respect for White Australians it seems.

Needless to say, Yore himself is white, even though he’s ready to racially excoriate the “white trash” he sees around him. His hyper-decorated hearse has been around at least since 2022, and exhibited on a number of occasions. One would hope the organisers of the fair might have come up with something new to stick in the entrance. Instead they’ve fallen back on Yore, represented by the enterprising Station Gallery, as a reliable touchstone of avant-garde outrage, obviously wanting to send a message about the radical nature of the art on display.

At present it would be hard to think of an Australian artist who tries harder than Yore when it comes to offending an audience. His work is filled with explicit polymorphous-perverse imagery and laced with angry profanities. One can’t fault Yore’s work ethic, as his painted, constructed, collaged and embroidered works are jam-packed, and often on a grand scale. It’s a convincing picture of obsessive-compulsive expression in which niceties such as composition are thrown out the window.

Yet the more offensive Yore becomes, the more he is embraced by the contemporary art hierarchies, even to the extent of making him the keynote exhibitor at Melbourne’s major commercial art event. Coming along at the same time as the wrangle at Creative Australia, about the selection and de-selection of Khaled Sabsabi as Australia’s next representative for the Venice Biennale, this highlights the strange masochism of the contemporary art world. As this debate shows no sign of stopping, I’ll probably take another look next week.

Without wanting to sound like a prophet of doom I believe we are facing an unprecedented crisis in the way art is being collected and exhibited. The uber galleries call the shots, and cash-strapped museums are quick to obey. The prevalence of big money means that more discerning collectors are unable to compete with nouveau riche newcomers looking for an investment. On the other hand, institutions have begun to act like moral guardians of society, only showing works by certain types of artists, even if those works are deliberately intended to offend, as in Paul Yore’s “queer” creations.

The artworld could probably be divided into two groups: Those who believe that to be truly important, art has to address the political and social issues of the day, taking an opposing stand; and those who would like to see the politics removed from art altogether. There’s also room for a middle-ground, featuring works that manage to be political in content, but with undeniable aesthetic and intellectual qualities.

I count myself within the latter category, not ruling out overtly political art, but hankering for a higher degree of discernment in what is shown and collected. This necessarily means being open to a broader range of work, without the restrictive categorisations that are exerting such a debilitating influence on exhibitions and acquisitions. Above all, it would be good to avoid the kneejerk approval of so much dreary, second-rate work that simply falls under the right heading, or makes the approved political gestures. We need a little connoisseurship to pollute all that ideological purity. To continue on the same paths, with no rethinking whatsoever, is the road to oblivion, taking culture into a cul-de-sac where it can be safely ignored by most people.

This crisis has been coming for a long time, and it would be impossible to assign blame to any one party. In a sense, we’re all to blame for tolerating the slow erosion of things we hold to be important. We have tolerated the stupid politicisation of contemporary art and the creeping corporatism that has transformed museums such as the Art Gallery of NSW into cold, unfriendly places, more suitable for venue hire than exhibitions. We’ve watched the media lose interest in the arts, becoming content to parrot whatever is found in a press release. Criticism is considered an antiquated occupation, rather like being wheelwright or a blacksmith.

How do we account for this? The decay of truth as an absolute standard in the era of Donald Trump and Elon Musk? The power of large commercial interests that now control the media and exert an influence on public galleries? The decay of public space brought about by the Internet and social media, ensuring that everybody pursues their own interests, regardless of the rest? Yes, yes and yes. But we’re all in it together, and it’s time to own up – a bit like businessman, Mark Carnegie, telling a forum recently that those who invested in the cryptocurrency boom have only themselves to blame for a raft of new regulations:

"To the extent that anybody bitches and moans about regulation we sowed the wind. We made common cause with criminals and scumbags for far too long by virtue of the bull market”… Mr Carnegie said crypto’s utopian goals were overrun by “a lot of really, really scummy Ponzi schemes”… “We were [all] part of that and enjoyed the bull market and we have to suffer, at the day of the day, collective responsibility.”

With contemporary art we’ve all implicitly accepted the inherent correctness of the museums and the marketplace, notwithstanding our complaints and bitching. We’ve stood by and watched it subside into a hot mess, an indigestible stew of hypocrisy, fed by political grandstanding and flashy money. We’ve been complacent and cowardly while the Ponzi schemes ran rampant. Nothing could better illustrate the state we’re in than Creative Australia’s Venice Biennale disaster, which shows how selection committees could blithely accept political positions that are inflammatory in the everyday world, then become outraged when the inevitable blowup occurs. It was, as that useful cliché has it, an accident waiting to happen. This week, it was the solemn duty of Creative Australia CEO, Adrian Collette, to front up to a Senate Committee and explain what went wrong. The only thing we learned was that he didn’t feel he was personally to blame. Like so many bosses nowadays, he’s found that power need not entail responsibility.

The art column looks at the Ethel Carrick exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, an event that allows us our most comprehensive-ever view of this painter. When an artist’s pictures have sold for more than a million dollars it’s a stretch to call her ‘neglected’, but the received wisdom is that Ethel has always been slightly overshadowed by her husband, Emanuel Phillips Fox. Well, Mannie is out the frame this time, and there’s plenty of good work on display.

The film being reviewed is The Seed of the Sacred Fig, the incredible Iranian movie made by a director, Mohammad Rasoulof, who narrowly avoided being flogged, imprisoned for eight years, and stripped of his property. Instead he escaped to Germany, and one week later would watch his utterly fearless film get a 12-minute, standing ovation at Cannes. Personally, I’ve never seen a braver movie – a complete anomaly at a time when so many people are scrambling to bend the knee to power. Before anyone starts bleating about ‘freedom of speech’, they’d do well to look at this film, made in a country where the government speaks directly on God’s behalf.